It felt like this was already a bad idea to go to the void to prove we were worthy of Jeans telling us her story, but Kalei and Roux agreed to it.

Jeans gave me worse and worse vibes with every passing second. Just something about her...everything in my body told me not to trust her. She floated in front of Aira as she led us through the campus.

I didn't spend a lot of time exploring the school, so it felt like I could uncover something new or strange any day given the school's strange mix of ancient and completely new. I could be walking past something with old looking architecture, then turn a corner to see some high-tech hall with a bunch of touch screens on the wall and a troubling amount of product placement for a school. There was also the new formerly Falling Shards space that'd soon be ours, so I resigned myself to just never fully understanding this school as long as I was there.

"Still can't believe they would ever give up the esteemed legacy the Wildfire Hearts campus had to move anything here, let alone the entire campus," Jeans sighed.

"Yeah, well, Falling Shards is getting real big, so...marketability or whatever," Kalei said.

We headed towards the void entry building, with some moments Jeans blipped away, apparently not wanting her status of being like spiritually and cosmically fused to Aira known to more than just our group.

"Hey, wait, if we're going here, they need to like check us, right?" I said. "We have to be careful about going into the void, don't we?"

"You don't have to worry about that," Jeans said. It was one of her moments where she was blipped away, so something about hearing her voice when she wasn't present was incredibly unsettling. As was her popping up again like a ghost. "I gave Aira my credentials, the people who should know from Wildfire Hearts know that anything she's doing has my classification and credentials."

Kalei whistled. "Classification and credentials, Jeans is so big league, huh..."

"I wonder how you even get on that kind of level," I said. With how strict the school could be about, well, almost everything, Jeans having an apparent "can do whatever" pass didn't make much sense to me.

"Right? Let me in on that," Kalei said.

"You won't. Not ever," Jeans said. "But I can graciously let you use the privileges I have."

"Seriously?" Kalei said.

"You're welcome," Jeans said.

"I mean about the impossible to get part,"  Kalei said.

"That is because of greatness," Jeans said. "Something most of you can't and won't ever reach, but maybe one or two of you could someday." She winked at me. She was pretty cute, and her smile appeared warm and friendly, but it still twisted my stomach.

"What does that even mean?" Syval asked. "Like they just figure out you're great and let you do anything you want? Because I'm pretty awesome, where's my do anything pass?"

"You can't exactly measure greatness, I don't think," I said.

"It isn't exactly like that," Aira said. "Jeans explained it to me in a less ego filled way when she helped me get this."

Aira pulled out a keycard, kind of a chunky plastic device about the shape of a payment card, but a lot thicker.

"A literal do anything pass!" Syval said. "That's...wow."

"It's a rough process to get this, according to her," Aira said.

"It is," Jeans said. "Measuring greatness isn't easy. When my fangs came in, it was abundantly clear that I was powerful, so I was brought to a testing site, where I showed it wasn't just power, it was ability, potential, skill, all of it."

"See, that's still kinda vague," Aira said.

"I'm not going to get into the details of how to test a Cani's dimensional situational compatibility, it has a lot of algebra involved," Jeans said.

"We had a talk, a bit about things," Aira said. "Jeans still won't talk to me much, but she explained that to me at least. She had a bunch of tests and they showed she was powerful, and she had the connections to get promoted for going on void expeditions is my read on it."

"That's a brief explanation, yes," Jeans said.

"One thing you gotta keep in mind with her is she'll just lie," Kalei said, flicking me in the shoulder. "So if you talk to her and you're not sure if she's telling the truth about something for one of us, just ask, I'll fact check."

"I will also be on fact check duty," Roux said. "I may not know much about Jeans, but she did trap me in a pod once, so."

"A charming and welcoming group we have here," Jeans said.

"Well, you did capture everyone and lock a bunch of us in pods, that's gonna stick with people," Aira said.

"My first fact check statement is that the greatness test thing is completely true," Roux said. "Because I had abnormally high scores on all of those, but elected to not join the program, not wanting to overshadow anyone, and needing some of my secret, nefarious black market businesses to not be brought to light by the spotlight such a program would give me."

"We maybe need a fact checker for Roux too." Kalei said.

With the effective swap of Falling Shards and Wildfire Hearts, there were a bunch of workers from both schools either packing and sending away equipment or unpacking things from Wildfire Hearts in the void entry building. Aira took a sharp turn as soon as we got there, power walking down a hallway until we reached an area that was unambiguously Wildfire Hearts style. Aira flashed that chunky plastic card to a staffer, and we were let into a void entry room of our own.

Another thing in Cani life I hadn't really wrapped my head around was the Atrian/Endoran divide. It seemed beyond stupid to have like a "good" school in the Atrian side and an "evil" one for the Endorans, then load up the Endorans with the better equipment and let them do whatever. It brought more churning feelings in my gut. If Kalei wasn't along for this, I think I would have bailed by now.